Construction

Construction Award -- Private building Under $10 million

A quarter of the Korsmo workforce came from Native American tribes, some of whom had never worked on a construction site.

Nisqually tribal administration building

Location: Olympia

General contractor: Korsmo Construction

Owner/developer: Nisqually Indian Tribe

Primary designer: Womer & Associates

This 26,000-square-foot facility provides offices for several of the Nisqually Tribe’s agencies.

Korsmo helped to provide constructability solutions for many features, including a custom roofing system, interior water feature and cable-supported glass wall system that placed high tension on the structure.

Integrating some of these systems required that Korsmo maintain tolerances as little as an eighth of an inch across multiple structural elements over several hundred feet, both vertically and horizontally.

The Korsmo team provided 40-foot cedar trees that were hollowed and hand-peeled for interior and exterior 8-inch steel columns. This required special attention, keeping specific trees together through the milling process while acclimating them within the building.

Korsmo also committed to 25 percent of their workforce being from Native American tribes, selecting first from the Nisqually Tribe. A custom training packet was developed for Korsmo’s safety director to use with new hires prior to their starting work, some of whom had never before worked on a construction site.